


Special Delivery

by Ladybug_21



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/F, Newspapers, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: "And your Danny, he used to deliver my newspaper."Jocelyn Knight has one additional reason for deciding to prosecute Danny Latimer's murder.
Relationships: Jocelyn Knight/Maggie Radcliffe
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	Special Delivery

**Author's Note:**

> An internal perspective of the scene from Season 2, Episode 4. I own no rights to _Broadchurch_.

"What made you change your mind?" Beth asked. "Why did you take the case?"

It was a question that Jocelyn hadn't quite worked out for herself, and she suspected that the answer had many complex layers. Quite uncharacteristically, she had changed her mind about taking the Latimers' case almost on sheer impulse. Normally, Jocelyn was the type to sit on such decisions for hours, listening to the steady tick of her clock in the corner, feeling the light and shadows drift across her living room from the enormous picture windows, not announcing her next moves until her choice had settled and felt anchored in all directions to rationality and logic and morality. But as she stared in horror at Sharon Bishop on her television screen, Jocelyn had realised that her brilliant former pupil was setting herself up to tear the Latimers' lives to tatters—not out of malice towards the family itself, but out of fury towards Jocelyn and the systems that she represented. It had only seemed right for Jocelyn to step between the Latimers and the destructive force that she herself had set in motion.

"Joe Miller found himself a Rottweiler to defend him," Jocelyn answered, the simplest explanation to the whole complicated matter. "She knows how to play the system."

 _And I'm the one who taught her how to play it as well as she_ _can_ , Jocelyn added silently. _I'm the one whose refusal to take her son's case drove her to the bitterness and rage with which she's currently assaulting the entire justice system._ But Beth Latimer didn't need to know this. Beth Latimer had suffered enough without knowing just how painfully the barrister in whom she was placing her trust had failed the younger people in her own life.

Still, even if Jocelyn would not expand on how her own failings had exacerbated this whole mess, there was another reason that she had decided to take Danny Latimer's case, a positive reason.  
  
"And your Danny," Jocelyn added, "he used to deliver my newspaper."

"This was on his round?" Beth asked, her face lighting up.

Jocelyn nodded.

"He was a good boy," she told Beth. "Someone has to speak for him."

Jocelyn meant every word of it. Danny was the type to always greet Jocelyn with a polite "Good morning," whenever she happened to encounter him on his round, no matter how weakly the gray sunlight struggled through the too-early hours of the morning. Once, he had even taken the time to help Jocelyn find her house key when she dropped it on the ground and couldn't spot it in the darkness; his keen child's eyes had accomplished in seconds what her failing older eyes could not. The Latimers were a good family, and they certainly deserved good representation.

And yet, as Jocelyn watched Beth Latimer retreat back down the slope, away from her house, she could not help but reflect that she had not been entirely open with Beth about her motivations on this count, either. Danny Latimer had been a good boy, to be sure, but he had also been Jocelyn's newspaper boy. His role in Jocelyn's life was to deliver every morning the latest that Maggie Radcliffe saw fit to print. Even when Jocelyn hadn't seen Maggie in the flesh for weeks at a time, each daybreak Danny Latimer brought reassurance that the journalist was still out there, alive and well and editing with as much gusto as ever. Some days, after thanking Danny for her paper, Jocelyn stepped back inside, closed the door, and brought the newsprint up to her face, breathing in the familiar smells of wood pulp and ink. She imagined that those same scents clung gently to Maggie's clothes and hands when she left the newsroom of _The Echo_ every evening, wondered if Maggie's current lover could detect them when she buried her nose in Maggie's hair after a long day of work. Such thoughts filled Jocelyn simultaneously with silent devotion and with desperate longing; and in these moments, she both adored and despised Maggie and her newspaper, for making Jocelyn so acutely aware of both her undying infatuation and her deep loneliness.

Jocelyn shook her head at her own sentimentality and went to go find space in her refrigerator for the lasagne that Beth had brought. Perhaps it was ridiculous that Jocelyn should deify Danny Latimer as the unwitting Hermes who had delivered such sacred messages to her doorstep each morning. But she could not help but feel grateful to him, regardless. Those first years back in Broadchurch and away from the courtrooms of London, Jocelyn had had little to sustain her besides her memories and her dreams. Danny Latimer had helped keep both alive, by bringing just a little bit of Maggie into Jocelyn's existence every day. And now, Maggie Radcliffe herself was constantly appearing at Jocelyn's door, checking in to see how the case was progressing, startlingly physical after so many years of being present only in print. Jocelyn didn't know what to make of it all, didn't know if it was morally defensible to see any silver lining in a young boy's death. But either way, representing Danny Latimer was the very least that Jocelyn could do in quiet thanks.


End file.
